Xiaodan Huang, born in April 1979, is a Professor-level Senior Pharmaceutical Engineer. She currently serves as a member of the Party Committee and Chief Engineer of the company, and directs provincial-level Enterprise Technology Center, Key Laboratory, and Engineering Research Center. As a representative of the 16th Guangzhou Municipal People’s Congress, she has led her team in achieving outstanding contributions in R&D, technological innovation, and commercialization of Chinese patent medicines and health food products. She has been recognized as a High-Level Talent in Guangzhou and received the "Nanshan Award for Technological Innovation," among other honors.
She has undertaken 6 national and 12 provincial research projects. Notably, she led the completion of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology’s "Intelligent Manufacturing Project for Packaging Lines of Famous Chinese Patent Medicines," significantly enhancing production automation and intelligence. She has authored 3 professional books and published 48 papers, including 4 indexed in SCI. With 58 authorized invention patents, she has obtained 2 new drug approvals, 3 clinical trial approvals, and 1 health food production license. She has participated in drafting a total of 12 international, national, and industry standards.
Her accolades include a Silver Medal at the Geneva International Exhibition of Inventions, 5 China Excellent Patent Awards, 3 provincial/ministerial science and technology awards, and 4 social/science progress awards.
Innovation in traditional plant-based beverages is no longer driven by flavor adjustment alone. The key challenge today lies in systematically extending flavor architecture, product formats, and consumption occasions, while preserving core flavor identity.
Herbal tea, formulated from multiple botanicals with food–medicine homology, derives its value from a holistic herbal flavor system, rather than a single sweet or bitter note. Based on this characteristic, WALOVI has developed the "Herbal Tea Plus" approach, positioning herbal tea flavor as a transferable base that can be integrated into different categories and usage scenarios, including coffee, snacks, and foodservice.
From an R&D perspective, this session explores how herbal tea flavors can be adapted through sugar reduction, concentration, and cross-category applications, and how balance is achieved between flavor stability, carrier compatibility, and scalable commercialization, outlining a practical pathway for category expansion.